This idea caught my imagination on boingboing today...

This well-developed project from Columbia University walks through the realities, possibilities and constraints of multi-storey, urban, high-rise farming: What is proposed here that differs radically from what now exists is to scale up the concept of indoor farming, in which a wide variety of produce is harvested in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond the city limits. Cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and other large farm animals seem to fall well outside the paradigm of urban farming. However, raising a wide variety of fowl and pigs are well within the capabilities of indoor farming. It has been estimated that it will require approximately 300 square feet of intensively farmed indoor space to produce enough food to support a single individual living in an extraterrestrial environment (e.g., on a space station or a colony on the moon or Mars)."

Thursday, June 09, 2005

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Programmable matter

Tiny robots that can turn into any shape - from a replica human to a banana to a mobile phone - are being developed by scientists in the United States.

The science of claytronics, which will use nanotechnology to create robots called catoms, should enable 3D copies of people to be "faxed" for virtual meetings. A doctor could also consult with a patient over the phone, even taking their pulse by holding the wrist of the claytronic replica.

The nano "clay" could be carried around, shape-shifting into anything when required. Your claytronic mobile phone could turn into a hammer and then a pair of running shoes. Todd Mowry, at Intel's research labs in Pittsburgh said: "You could have a little lump of this stuff you carry around and it could be a million different things. It's like the world's ultimate Swiss army knife." His partner, Seth Goldstein, of Carnegie Mellon University, said: "It's absolutely going to work."

Not a single such robot yet exists; building these one-millimeter diameter robots is beyond current technology. And it could be decades before a synthetic doctor is possible, much less affordable. So far, the group has been able to get four catoms to act together, but at more than 4cm in diameter, they are considerably larger than the nano-sized robots required to make the clay.

Carr announces $8bn railway project

"The NSW Government will spend $8 billion on a rail line under Sydney Harbour and links to new suburbs in the north-west and south-west of the city in the biggest expansion of the network since the 1930s.

As revealed in the Herald today, the new line will run from Rouse Hill to Leppington and will include new stations under Pitt Street, Castlereagh Street, at The Rocks, North Sydney and Crows Nest.

The Premier, Bob Carr, today said the Government had been working on the rail expansion for the past year.

"The Government will invest $8 billion over the next 15 years for the biggest expansion we've seen of the rail network since the 1930s," Mr Carr said.

"Fundamentally, [this is] a new rail service to the growth areas of the north-west and to the south-west, and an extra capacity for the CityRail network."

The new line will be funded through a mix of borrowings, budget funding and private-sector finance."